The Chancellor’s spending cuts will condemn Britain to a decade of decline on the world stage unless he comes up with a plan for growth, the boss of British Airways’ parent firm IAG has warned.

The broadside from Willie Walsh, one of Britain’s foremost business leaders, will ratchet up the pressure on George Osborne to show that austerity is working.

Just days after the Chancellor set out his latest plans in the Autumn Statement, Walsh said he wasn’t convinced that Osborne is on the right course.

Not convinced: IAG boss Willie Walsh said the Chancellor must come up with a plan for growth

‘My personal view is that he isn’t,’
said Walsh. ‘You’ve got to create an environment where you can pursue
growth. I don’t see an agenda for growth and some measures that are
taken are making us less competitive.’

It is feared that Britain will suffer a triple-dip recession this winter having briefly recovered in the autumn.

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Last week the Office for Budget
Responsibility, which publishes forecasts for the Treasury, said the
economy is set to shrink again in the final three months of the year
before recovering.

Business secretary Vince Cable
yesterday said there was ‘certainly a risk’ of the UK going back into
its third recession since 2008.

Danny Alexander, chief secretary to
the Treasury, said ‘it is an uncertain world out there’ but added that
he expects to see ‘steady growth slowly starting to return next year and
the year after that’.

A report by The Jobs Economist, an
independent consultancy that analyses employment and pay, showed that
8million people are short of work in Britain. It includes 2.56million
unemployed, 3.05million underemployed, and 2.38million economically inactive
who want a job.

Dr John Philpott, director of the
think tank, said: ‘A proper temperature check shows the UK workforce is
still shivering with as many as 8m people either fully or partly short
of work. The labour market looks set to experience sub-zero conditions
for much of the remainder of this decade.’Walsh has been a voracious critic of
policies that hit aviation, such as the dithering over a third runway at
Heathrow and air passenger duty – the aviation tax set to rise in April
for the fifth time in as many years.

And he warned that such policies risk turning Britain into an international backwater within a decade.

‘Ten years from now we’re going to
see a much worse scenario,’ he said, warning that falling numbers of
business travellers into and out of Britain would hurt exports.

Figures from EU statistics body
Eurostat show that UK aviation traffic fell by 7.2 per cent between 2007
and 2011, while the other 26 EU nations saw a 6.4 per cent rise.

‘If we’re not careful we’re out of
the Premier League and trying to get yourself promoted is very expensive
and very difficult,’ said Walsh.